Wakenhyrst

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She has slept on reindeer skins, swum with wild orca (killer whales), and got nose-to-nose with polar bears—and, of course, wolves.

Wakenhyrst – Michelle Paver

Naturally, Stearne is utterly unlikeable, a tyrant, he clearly has been mentally unstable all his life, but because he is financially independent, a landowner, a scholar, he can do pretty much whatever pleases him. Settling into Maud’s life in Wake’s End, the manor, was effortless, familiar, and utterly compelling. Lo and behold, when I read the authors notes I learned that the character of Alice Pyett was largely based on Kempe’s experiences.Il fatto che sia una figura femminile è particolarmente rilevante, perché il trattamento ricevuto da questa categoria nell’epoca descritta costituisce una grossa parte degli elementi horror del romanzo – a cominciare dai vasi pieni di sangue che escono dalla camera della madre condannata dal marito cattivissimo a restare continuamente incinta. His wife is French, originally, and plays along to the extend of allowing him to take her again and again despite her body slowly but surely giving up. Edwardian/Gothic mysteries are among my favourite genres, and this one delivered those chills in all their glory! She is trapped and thwarted by the overwhelming misogyny of society, in its attitudes to women in this period of history. The journals of painter and historian Edmund Stearne have been kept safely in Wake’s End since his admittance to an asylum for the criminally insane.

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Goodreads

To me, this book was highly unsettling and infuriating throughout thanks to the author having created a splendid setting and detailed (albeit often stupid, even for the period) characters. She must survive a world haunted by witchcraft, the age-old legends of her beloved fen – and the even more nightmarish demons of her father’s past. When Maud's mother dies in childbirth and she's left alone with her strict, disciplinarian father, Maud's isolation drives her to her father's study, where she happens upon his diary. This is a glorious piece of Edwardian gothic historical fiction from Michelle Paver, it has elements of horror and madness, set in the remote village of Wakenhyrst, surrounded by the fens of Suffolk at the start of the 20th century. The windswept wilderness, the old creaking house, the old man Jubel who lives rough in the fen and the eerie going’s on, all equate to a fabulously atmospheric read.She had been ‘given in marriage’ and ‘permitted’ fine clothes – although only if Father approved of them. She grows to realize that she can grant herself little freedoms, that her own beliefs may lie somewhere outside of what everyone else in Wakenhyrst believes, that perhaps the only thing worth believing in is the one thing she holds most dearly: the fen.

Wakenhyrst ⋆ Curiosity Killed the Bookworm Wakenhyrst ⋆ Curiosity Killed the Bookworm

Maud’s father’s discovery of an unsettling, grotesque painting of devils marks a shift in life at Wake’s End. It has everything I love about the genre: dramatic location, mystery, folklore and beautiful writing style. Maud exhibits an astute awareness of the unfair treatment of women and the domestic spheres that they inhabit – even as a young girl she understands and deplores the restrictions her mother operates under: “It was Father who decreed what Maman ate, read, did and thought.

And so we slowly catch up on what has happened in this house throughout the decades, the tragic events happening to several individuals of three generations until the conclusion. You'll find out many things about Maud: her first love, her love to animals (the chatterpie), her rivals (Ivy) and her fears when the obsessions of her father get life threatening.

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Waterstones Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver | Waterstones

The story is set between 1906 (Maud is 8-yrs-old) and 1966 and I found the treatment of women and the antiquated beliefs of the Edwardian period fascinating and appalling. Paver, however, doesn’t rely on the trope; she brings it to life with each word on the page, creating a dark atmosphere of isolation, secrecy, and fear that is almost tangible. But Maud is highly intelligent and slowly she thinks of ways to get back at her father, to unsettle and vex him.Starting with her 2010 novel, Dark Matter, and continuing with 2016’s Thin Air, Paver has been writing ghost stories distinguished by their vividly evoked settings and the struggles of their protago­nists.